Let lovers eat cake

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Three days before Valentine's Day, Francine Bove plans to give the Danbury area a valentine of sorts. She is opening a new bakery, Cake Haven, on Padanaram Road, where she'll be whipping up cakes to steal your heart.

Not surprisingly, most of her cakes for Valentine's Day actually will be in the shape of a heart and will have sweet nothings written on top - "I Love You," "Be Mine," "Hugs and Kisses," or - well, just about anything you may want to say.
And if you're reading this and thinking, "I'm in between romances and don't have anyone special at the moment, so here comes that sadistic, painful, miserable day of the year ," no problem.
Stop in and buy yourself a cake. Give yourself a valentine  even if it's merely one of Bove's elaborately decorated cupcakes or a heart-shaped brownie. Or there's a chocolate cookie in the shape of a teddy bear. His icing T-shirt says "Hugs," so you can't help but smile when you look at him.
"Cakes should be fun," Bove (Bo-vay) said, sitting at small bistro table in her new bakery, which was still under construction when she was interviewed. Glass counters were in place, walls had been painted a cheerful yellow and workmen were putting finishing touches on the kitchen.
"Usually a celebration is supposed to be fun," Bove continued, "so the cake (maker) should have fun, too. You can have fun with colors, stripes, shapes  "
She's made a groom's cake in the shape of a tuxedo, and placed a Saint Bernard dog on top of a wedding cake.
"It was strange because it was a very formal, tiered wedding cake with pearl dots on rolled fondant icing," she said. "For some reason, they wanted a statue of a dog on the top. Maybe the dog brought them together."
In 2004 Bove, who ran her own business,
Bove Pastries
Inc., in Manhattan for seven years, was asked to make the wedding cake for Mayor
Rudolf Giuliani
's wedding to his second wife,
Judy Nathan
.
"She asked for a yellow butter cake layered with vanilla butter cream and fresh raspberries," Bove recalled. "We iced it in rolled fondant." (Rolled fondant is a sugar icing that's rolled out like pie pastry, then applied to the cake in sheets. It gives the cake a smooth, formal look.)
The Giuliani cake was eight tiers high  almost 4 feet tall.
"It had to be delivered to Gracie Mansion, so we had to drive it across Manhattan. We took it in an SUV - I was sweating blood until we got it there."
Bove transported the cake in four sections, each section on a cake board in a box. She assembled the cake after arriving at Gracie Mansion.
"I had decorated it beforehand, and we took extra icing and extra frosting flowers to apply after we got there. That wedding was for 400 people, so we also took extra sheet cakes to serve everyone."
The cake turned out beautifully and, before it was eaten, was photographed and later appeared in several bridal magazines.
"Luckily I've rarely had a mishap delivering a cake," she said. "How do I deliver them? Very, very carefully."
Her cakes and cookies have been sold in Dean & DeLuca gourmet food-kitchen stores, and, during Christmas season in 2002, her cookies were sold in Bloomingdale's department stores across the country.
"If you can imagine making 7,000 gingerbread boys," she said, then laughed. At that time, she employed five to seven assistants. For Bloomingdale's, she and her staff also made cookies in the shape of the store's "Little Brown Bag" shopping bag, and turned out thousands of round cookie ornaments that could be hung on trees.
She and her husband, Steven Bove, left New York City to live in Connecticut a year and a half ago. "We just wanted a quieter lifestyle," she said. "We found a cute little house in Naugatuck."
She ran Bove Pastries out of that house for over a year and worked part time for Sweet Maria's, a bakery in Waterbury.
"I loved working with her," says
Maria Sanchez
, owner of Sweet Maria's. "Francine is very talented and she does everything so effortlessly. She made me a birthday cake that was kind of a cartoon of me and my shop. It had the store's awning and everything. It was the best birthday cake I ever had."
Bove's new bakery is in a small corner storefront in the Ironwood Square shopping plaza. The spot was home to Salvo Bakery for many years, and more recently to Bluebird Bakery.
Although the bakery may be a little hard to find because it's in a shopping plaza that's at right angles with the busy road, Bove hopes her reputation will precede her, and customers will take the time to find her cozy spot next door to
Jim Barbarie
's restaurant.
Her cakes have been featured in Bride's, In Style Weddings, New York and Gourmet magazines. One can be seen in the current winter issue of Elegant Bride magazine. and two are shown in the hardcover book "In Style Weddings" released in January by
Time Inc.
Home Entertainment.
Bove's cakes have also been shown on "The Early Show" on CBS, and on NBC's "Later Today Show."
"No  I didn't go on television with them," she said. "I'm shy about things like that."
Bove grew up in Queens, N.Y., and at an early age showed a talent for art.
"I was always drawing. I did a lot of cartoons," she said.
She attended the
High School of Art Design
in New York City and went on to graduate from the city's
Fashion Institute of Technology
with a degree in advertising and graphic design, then embarked upon a career as a graphic designer for children's fashion houses. She lived in Queens and commuted to a studio in Manhattan.
"And I traveled a lot, mostly to Asia, because that's where so many of the fashion houses are now."
During that time, she met another graphic designer who was to become her husband.
"Steven and I met on the train going from Queens to Manhattan," she said.
Steven Bove, an independent graphic artist, has a studio in the couple's
Naugatuck house
. He has just written and illustrated "The Comic Cartoonist's Workbook," a self-published book that will soon be available through Amazon.com.
Francine Bove worked in the fashion industry for seven years. The job was often hectic with deadlines to meet. To relax, she began decorating cakes.
"I found I loved doing it, and I began getting compliments. People would ask me to make a cake for an occasion. And then they even started paying me."
So she enrolled in
Peter Kump
's
Cooking School
in Manhattan, now called the
Institute for Culinary Education
.
"I took courses there at night and worked as a graphic designer during the day," she said. She earned a certificate in pastry and baking, then decided to embark upon a full-time career in baking.
She interned at Cheryl Klienman Cakes in Brooklyn.
Klienman, who has a sterling reputation and has received much publicity for her cakes (the Clintons are among her customers), asked Bove to work for her. Bove stayed with Klienman Cakes for a year and a half, then eventually began to build a line of customers.
Bove rented space in the meatpacking district of Manhattan and launched Bove Pastries Inc. in 1999.
"All of my customers, except for the catering assignments, were wholesale," she said. "When I moved to Connecticut, working for Sweet Maria's was my first experience with retail."
Now all of her business will be retail.
On Feb. 12, she will not only be opening a bakery in Danbury, she will be selling her cakes, cookies and brownies at the Chocolate Lovers' Expo in Waterbury. The event is a benefit for Easter Seals.
"I guess I'll try to be in both places at once," she says with a smile.
Wherever she is, she'll have fun with her cakes.

Cake Haven is at 45 Padanaram Road, in Ironwood Square, Danbury, and can be reached at (203) 739-0565.

The Chocolate Lovers' Expo will be Feb. 12 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Connecticut Grand Hotel and Conference Center, 3580 East Main St., Waterbury. Admission is $15 in advance, $20 at the door, $5 for children; they can be purchased at Cake Haven.